Stop giving Facebook free ads and traffic

Each marketing channel should be judged based on how many new customers it brings and Facebook is no exception. Even if your analytics show that you are getting some conversions from Facebook, it might still be a bad idea. Why?

Suppose you put a Facebook like button prominently on your website. Some of the visitors to your page will click this button. Later on you post something interesting on your page. Some of the visitors who signed up through your page will remember you, click back to your site and then possibly sign up as subscribers. This will look great in your analytics, wow, I gained new customers from Facebook! But these are people that YOU originally sent to Facebook. They were already promising leads and now you are just getting some of them back.

Having a like button seems to be a better choice than not having one, but that’s not really what you should be comparing against. Even if you get someone to like your page, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to reach that person later, at least not without paying Facebook to boost your posts.

If you had these people as newsletter subscribers instead, you could reach more of them for very little cost and completely control the experience without surrendering control to Facebook. Every company seemingly being on Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean that it is something you are required to do.

Not just this, but having Facebook buttons prominently on your site is basically you giving free advertising to Facebook, sharing your visitor analytics with Facebook for free, creating content for Facebook for free and then to top it all possibly even pay Facebook in the end for post boosts. Think about it. Paying them to reach visitors which you originally gave them for free.